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Hans Eysenck

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Hans Eysenck (1916-1997) was a German-born British psychiatrist.

Racialism

Eysenck believed race influenced intelligence, arguing that racial intelligence quotient differences were not purely environmental but largely genetic. He wrote:[1]

All the evidence to date suggests the ... overwhelming importance of genetic factors in producing the great variety of intellectual differences which we observe in our culture, and much of the difference observed between certain racial groups.

He further wrote:[2]

[T]he whole course of development of a child's intellectual capabilities is largely laid down genetically, and even extreme environmental changes ... have little power to alter this development."

Freud

Eysenck helped discredit Sigmund Freud, and wrote a chapter in Uses and Abuses of Psychology and the book Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire to that end.

He wrote a paper in the 1950s that said evidence did not "support the hypothesis that psychotherapy facilitates recovery from neurotic disorder",[3] attacking Freud.

Paranormal

Eysenck was agnostic, but believed in the paranormal.[4][5]

See also

References

  1. Eysenck, Hans. Race, Intelligence and Education, 1971, London: Temple Smith, p. 130
  2. Eysenck, The Inequality of Man, 1973, London: Temple Smith, pp. 111–12
  3. "Classics in the History of Psychology – Eysenck (1957)". Psychclassics.yorku.ca. 23 January 1952. Retrieved 22 July 2011. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Eysenck/psychotherapy.htm
  4. Eysenck, H. J. (1957), Sense and Nonsense in Psychology. London: Pelican Books. p. 131.
  5. Eysenck & Sargent (2nd edition, 1993), Explaining the Unexplained. London: BCA, No ISBN. Preface & ff.